Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Gastro ban

There has been talk across facebook, twitter and even at the old-fashioned playground about some bad gastro strains lurking around.

The tricky thing about gastro is knowing the incubation period. I remember a time last year when the kids and I were struck down with gastro and my husband seemingly escaped symptom-free... It was not to be. Exactly two weeks later he took ill with a more violent episode than we had.

One of my friends admitted yesterday that she has a two-week ban on any face-to-face communication with people post-gastro. She said that rule has helped her house stay gastro-free for almost five years.

To me gastro can feel like the plague so maybe she's on to something. Anyway, it's one thing to enforce a ban like that, but another to properly adhere to it. There's no way you can avoid contact with other families across school and kinder runs.

So what do you do? How long do you wait isolated at home before you reintroduce yourself and your germs back into your social circle? And what happens if your friends, post illness have declared themselves gastro-free, but you're not so sure?

4 comments:

crikey! two weeks? I have heard from a nurse to stay away 24 hours after the symptoms stop. I've had gastro twice and hubby and toddler escaped the bug both times. Thanks to two bathrooms and hand sanitiser.